Minimum mess makes – Spring pictures.

As I blogged recently, I have some issues with mess. Since then, I’ve been trying to make sure that we do something crafty or sensory pretty much every day that we’re here (if we’re out and about I don’t bother quite so much!)

I wish I’d written more nine/ten years ago about what I did with Big and Small. When I look back, I did write a fair amount, but it reads like a teacher tick list, rather than a discussion of how it worked, what they said, did they enjoy it? So for example I found this poetry, sneaky maths and a ramble from way back in 2005. I’m sure at the time it summed up the day really well. And I didn’t have a digital camera then, and there weren’t smartphones all over the place, so no lovely pictures. But it doesn’t bring the day back for me, and that’s what the archives here are supposed to achieve.

So here’s a personal post, to remind me of a day with small children all over again. This is how our pre-mandatory-education-age home education shapes up a lot of the time.

This is very cute – Lily the lamb goes exploring and accidentally gets too far from her field to be able to see her mother. Fortunately, one of the other animals calms her down and tells her to listen, and over the noise of all the other animals she’s seen, she hears the baa sound of the flock and makes it back safe and sound.

Lots of baby animals to look at, sounds to make (and persuade Tigerboy to try to imitate), and fun Spring things to talk about. An ideal book for the weather we’re having this week, but you could use any Spring book to spark off the art activity.

Then I prepared some recycled cardboard (inside of a cereal packet) by sticking lots of bits of double sided sticky tape on. This is the minimum mess bit of my take on this – you could of course go for glue if you prefer. Double sided sticky tape 3 for £1 at Poundland makes this a fairly cheap activity too. And then I got out a variety of bits of craft stuff and let them at it.

Hm, did I say minimum mess? Looks rather like a small crafty bomb has gone off on this table. But it’s all easily picked up and put away.

Memories. Smallest putting cotton wool all across the bottom and telling me it was snow. I wonder where she had the association of snow and lambs from? Trying to remember if we’ve read any other books with that connection. Watching Tigerboy peel the backing off the sticky tape – got to be good for fine motor control. As is sticking tiny things.

They sat for ages working on these pictures ever so happily. And I sat next to them, listening to their chatter, while pottering on the internet and doing bits on the blog and social media. It was very companionable.

Smallest’s finished pic is wonderful. Must find Tigerboy’s and take a picture and add it in.